There are many benefits to having the latest comments on your blog displayed on your main page. In Blogger comments are only seen on post pages so visitors coming to your home page cannot see them unless they click on the small "COMMENTS" link after every post. If you include a Recent Comments section in your sidebar or your posts column then visitors can immediately read them and hopefully become impressed enough to return or click on them to read the posts.

When readers see the importance you give to their comments by displaying them on the main page of your blog many will take that as an incentive to post a comment.

There are two ways to include a Recent Comments Widget on the main page : The easy method and the slightly difficult Geek method..............

To do this login to Dashboard of Blogger and click on Layout link for your blog. This will open the Page Elements subtab of Template tab. Click on 'Add Page Element' link in sidebar. In the popup window click on Feed widget. In the Feed page element window paste the comments feed URL of your blog which is :

http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default

Instead of 'YOURBLOGNAME' put actual name of your blog. Choose the number of comments you want to show. The maximum is five at present and OK it. View Blog.If you want to show comments only from one post put this URL in it :

http://YOURBLOGNAME.blogspot.com/feeds/THISPOSTID/comments/default

Replace the CAPS.To get your post ID login to Dashboard and click on Posts. Click on Edit link of the post you want or place your mouse cursor over the link and look at the status bar of your browser bottom left hand corner. (Enable status bar from View--->Status Bar menu of your browser.) You will see something like this :

Copy down the number after postID and paste it in your comment feed url. You will then get the comments from this post only. The disadvantage of this method is that you get five comments only. The advantage is it is easy.

The FEED-TO-JAVASCRIPT (GEEK) METHOD

This is the second method and it is slightly more complicated. It enables you to have much more than five comments in your widget and also to customize it in the colors you want. It also includes a NOSCRIPT tag in case the viewer has Javascript disabled in his browser.

Substitute actual blog name in place of yourblogname. Verify the URL of your feed before using this form. You can do this by opening the above URL in your browser. It should show all your blog posts. If not check Settings----->Site Feed in your blog and verify that it is set to Short or Full.

Then selct the settings you want :

Show channel? (yes/no/title) Display information about the publisher of the feed (yes=show the title and description; title= display title only, no=do not display anything)Number of items to display. Enter the number of items to be displayed (enter 0 to show all available)

Use HTML in item display? ("yes" = use HTML from feed and the full item descriptions will be used, ignoring any character limit set above; "no" = output is text-only formatted by CSS; "preserve paragraphs" = no HTML but convert all RETURN/linefeeds toto preserve paragraph breaks)

Show item posting date? (yes/no) Display the date the item was added to the feed.

Target links in the new window? (n="no, links open the same page", y="yes, open links in a new window", "xxxx" = open links in a frame named 'xxxx', 'popup' = use a JavaScript function popupfeed() to open in new window)

After selecting the settings you want click on Preview and check to see that content from your blog is being displayed. Then click on Generate Javascript button. Copy all the code. Login to your Dashboard and click on Layout. Click add Page element link in sidebar and choose Html/Javascript option. In the popup window paste the code, give it a Title and OK it. View Blog. See picture below :

Click on picture to enlarge it. Number 1 Feed is using the second method and shows much more comments than Number 2 Feed which has been added using the Blogger feed widget. To add a page element to the posts column you will have to alter the code as shown in 10 Quick Tips for Smarter Blogging.

STYLE THE FEED WIDGET

You can change the colors of the feed widget added using the second method above. To do this go to Template------>Edit Html and scroll down to your sidebar code for the feed widget. It will look something like this :

.rss_box defines the bounding div for the entire display- use to define borders, fill, etc..rss_title the title of the feed and link style if displayed. Use with variants of rss_title a:link, rss_title a:hover, etc for rollover styles.rss_items defines the unordered list <ul>...</ul> for the feed items- use to define the padding/margins for items..rss_item display of each feed item description and title, <li>...</li> as well as the channel description, if displayed..rss_item a: variant for the item title and link style.rss_date defines the display of item posting dates

Just add your widget id before the clases above which represent the elements in the feed.

I hate to be dim, but I followed the geek version of adding a comments element, and everything went to plan until I viewed the blog and it listed my posts but was just not a comments element. (It works brilliantly as an archive though!) What am I doing wrong? Also, how can I change the colour of the text to match the rest of my page. I followed your "Style the Feed Widget" but didn't find anything on changing text colour. Also, how do I put in a "Post a Comment" Link? Many thanks!

Vin, I'm very sad again. recently i used the easy widget to get recent comments in my blog bus yesterday something changed and its not working properly anymore, there no more links. I tried to use the advamce methode but for some reason my URL is not validated. Ik dont understand so I realy feel dum ...

I also get a list of my actual blogs and not a list of the comments when I use the GEEK method. Your link for the geek method is different than for the easy method, so I tried using that instead. Instead of seeing comments I got a list with links saying "details." What is the actual link for the geek method? Thanks.

Hi Vin,first of all I want to thank you. I've used several of your tutorials now and they've worked out great. I'm a great designer but a hopeless techie and you've given me great tools.

I've just installed the easy method for recent comments AND posts and at first everything seemed to work out fine with all the right info showing up, but they're not reflecting changes as I put up new posts and receive comments! I know I can install them as HTML but I don't want more than 5 and really want the "authors" feature for comments. Any suggestions?

Oh, if you want to check it out (in case the link above doesn't work): http://fromsmilerwithlove.blogspot.com

Vin, you've already lost me with your question about page source. I tried out another comment widget with different code that works great and updates instantly. I've attached it here. The only thing I would like to add is the authors' names after each blurb. Is that possible?

I have been using this widget on several blogs for months with no problems. Suddenly on two of them, it doesn't work and the page element is just blank. I have ensured that Full Feeds are enabled and Full Comments etc from the Advanced Mode of the Site Feeds menu. If I change the URL of the HTML of the widget to one that works elsewhere it displays the comments from that other blog. But when I change it back to the URL of the pages I want it to show from, it goes back to being blank. And there are definitely comments to display! What can be wrong???

I have placed "recent comments" at the sidebar and they appear as they should. But I clicked the comment link, and it is blank. Same problem with the clicking the post.In case you need the url to check it out .http://angiesrecipes.blogspot.comthank you.

Hi VinI followed your advice to put both the recent comments and recent posts on my blog. COuld you please explain why there is such a delay before the most recent one of either show on my blog. I have a friend who has linked a feed to my blog, and my postings are showing on her blog, long before on mine?

I noticed this is several years old, but I do hope it is still being moderated. I, too, have put the "Recent Comments" widget on my site. It seems to not only help with more people reading my blog, but more people seem to leave comments now, too. My only question is, can you leave up the "Recent Posts" after putting the "Recent Comments" widget on there? Can you do both? I am kinda new to all this, so any help from anyone would be greatly appreciated.Thank You!

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Comments posted on Dummies Guide to Google Blogger (Beta) are moderated and will be approved only if they are on-topic and not abusive. Try not to include website URLs/links in your comments. You can email me : drbhatns at gmail dot com for any blogging question. Thanks,